Gonsett to California Broadcasters: Speak Up on Forest Service
Campaign
by Robert F. Gonsett
This commentary is by Bob Gonsett, W6VR, editor of the CGC Communicator
newsletter, and is reproduced here with permission.
The Cleveland National Forest is setting the table to ban or cripple
broadcasting activities at all nine of its communications sites
in the greater Santa Ana and San Diego areas of California. At best,
broadcasting would be relegated to secondary status, putting the
life of the facility in continuous jeopardy. At worst, broadcasting
would be banned outright.
One way this might play out is as follows. Say that a broadcaster
has been transmitting from an affected Forest Service site for 20
years without causing problems for other users. One day, Joe's Taxi
Service moves its radio repeater onto the site and receives interference
from the broadcast station. The Forest Service would force the longtime
broadcaster to do whatever it takes to eliminate the interference
with the cost borne by the broadcaster, even if a complex intermodulation
problem beyond the control of the broadcaster were involved.
If there was no feasible fix, the broadcaster would be forced
to stop its operations to accommodate the needs of the new non-broadcast
user. Meanwhile, there would be no obligation on the new user to
do anything to remedy the problem that its arrival had occasioned.
CGC Communicator readers were made aware of the Forest Service's
leanings in August 2000, and your help was much appreciated then:
http://www.bext.com/_CGC/2000/cgc407.htm
Now, the "anti-broadcasting ball" has gained momentum
and spread from Santiago Peak to include eight more sites. In addition,
operations at all of these sites must be "low power,"
a term which the Forest Service has yet to define.
Put simply, the Forest Service has presented no evidence to suggest
that a carefully designed broadcast facility is inherently incompatible
with land-mobile and other radio services. In fact, considerable
evidence exists to the contrary.
See the Forest Service's latest plan by visiting www.bext.com/_CGC/documents/Cleveland_National_Forest_LRMP.PDF
and check Appendix N (the last page) for an overview.
It would be helpful if you called this plan to the attention of
your station management and the NAB. There is no reason to believe
that the wanton discrimination against broadcasters will stop here.
Written comments are due by Sept. 20, 2002, by our calculation.
Radio World welcomes other
points of view.
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